Category: Blog

My company, Red Gate software, has given me a 6 week sabbatical. I’m documenting the time with all the posts under a tag if you want to follow along.

With the heat and bad weather, and a few chores, I didn’t get much done during the day except for pulling off clamps and checking the glue on part of the flagpole. Things looked good, but I wasn’t able to cut biscuit slots this morning.

I left for class early, and arrived in time to continue cutting tenons before the lecture started. With two classes missed by the instructor, I was sure we’d end up sitting for awhile.

With everything spread out, I managed to cut more, but they weren’t much better. I really am struggling with this part of the class and it’s annoying.

We had a lecture where we got the plans for our table (final project) as well as some time spent talking about how to buy wood and what to buy. It was interesting, but when we got to the math lesson for board-feet, normalizing a board into a volume for cost calculation, I had to sneak off to the restroom and a water break. I can do math, unlike quite a few of my classmates.

With the lecture over, I was back to sawing and paring. I am getting better, and the instructor have me a few hints.

One of the more helpful hints, which the TA hadn’t mentioned, was using the chisel to chop the shoulder straight. That helped me get a few fitting better, though I still tend to rout them too thin. That plane is a challenge.

I also used my square more to check how my cuts went. I think next week I’ll look to cut the tenons short and then chop them down to size.

My company, Red Gate software, has given me a 6 week sabbatical. I’m documenting the time with all the posts under a tag if you want to follow along.

I haven’t got much scheduled this week, just class Thur night (and Scouts Tues night). I will need to make up some time in the shop, but I’m thinking to go early Thur and work on a few things.

However I have planned on spending most of this week working on the flagpole. This is my last week, and I’d like to get it done, though probably not mounted in the air. I was up early for Pilates, and then grocery shopping, but around 11 I was home and I headed out in the 95F heat.

I uncovered the bench and unscrewed one of the guides on my jig. I want to use that as a way to glue things up in a line, so I got one side flat, flipped it over, and then moved the cleat to the widest mark, giving me a surface for the pole. I laid down the first side, which was the 2x6s that were thinned and tapered.

With that down, I put biscuits in all the slots and then put one of the 2×4 sides on. I quickly realized that even though I’d gone slow last week, I’d completely missed one of my marks. Since the biscuits are for alignment, and not support, I just left that one out.

You can see above all the biscuits sticking up and one side piece there. I added the second part to this side, and then did the other side. Things lined up well, though the boards were slightly twisted. I used a few clamps and decided things weren’t that far out.

However when I tried to add the top, I had problems. I couldn’t get it to slide onto the biscuits, a few of which were mis-aligned to the side. That means I hadn’t registered things properly with my cutter and one of the slots was too close to the edge or too far.

I also found I’d missed 5 or 6 marks completely. I suspect my marking was compromised with not having everything clamped down, so I need to re-cut 6 or so slots.

I didn’t want to skip gluing today, so I decided to glue the bottom and sides on, and then I’ll re-mark, re-cut, and glue the top on tomorrow. With that plan, I removed the biscuits and then got ready.

First, lay out the clamps.

It looks like a lot, but as I found out, I wish I’d had 6 or 10 more. With those laid out, I started mixing up my epoxy. I’d used the West Marine system, which has a resin and a hardener.

I had everything handy as I worried about things setting up in the heat. I mixed 5 pumps each, which I thought was a lot, but I think I should have mixed 6 as I was scraping the bottom of my bowl to finish.

Next I added filler to thicken the mixture and fill in any spaces. I’m not 100% confident I’ll have super tight joints, so I want to fill in spots where I can. As soon as I put some of this in, I donned gloves and mixed it up. As Norm said in the video, "if you get this stuff on you, you’ll be wearing it awhile." I remembered that as a bit of the filler dust came out.

No pictures here as I was hurrying, but I’ll get a kid to take some tomorrow. I thickened things to a thick waffle batter, and then grabbed my roller and went out. The bottom was down, and the sides were flipped over next to it. I rolled glue down the bottom, covering things thickly and then worked my way down the other side of the bench covering the sides.

I was glad I had gloves as I had to hold and reposition the sides a few times to cover them. Also to get the scarf joints covered. That was tricky and without gloves, I’m sure I’d have glue all over my hands (and probably not be typing today).

With the glue down, I raced up and down getting biscuits in the slots and then putting the sides down. I’d put biscuits in the one bad slot, so I pulled them quickly and dropped them, getting the sides on. The wind was also picking up, which had me worried about debris on the glue.

This was tedious and I worried about things setting up as I aligned the pieces, used a mallet to get them down and clamped sections. I worked my way down all 4 side pieces, using clamps around the scarf joints to hold things tight.

When I was done, this was what I had. Lots of clamps used, every one of the handheld 6", 12", 18" and even a few larger parallel ones and a bar clamp. Things looked tight, but I wish I’d had 6 more.

I covered everything up with a tarp as there were some dark clouds and called it a day. Hot, tired, I needed a break.

Tomorrow I’ll recut slots and glue the top. I also need to get the large rounding router bit so I can begin curving it on Wed.

My company, Red Gate software, has given me a 6 week sabbatical. I’m documenting the time with all the posts under a tag if you want to follow along.

It was another build day for me with Habitat. In the past week, this is my 4th volunteer day and I’ve done it all. A critical home repair, a shift in the store, a deconstruction, and today a construction.

I arrived back in Globeville, just north of downtown Denver. This is a few blocks from my critical repair, and it’s a townhouse complex of 2 and 3 unit buildings that are being built on a large square of land. The last set of buildings is being done now, with our volunteers working on a 2 unit and 3 unit complex. There are already 20-30 buildings done, and then there’s a last 3 unit building that’s a few weeks behind the two we were working on.

This was an all single volunteer day, with no companies participating. We only had 3 young Americorps workers getting us set up, with supervisors for Habitat already working with professional contractors when we arrived. They said we’d mostly be painting, which I don’t like, but there were three spots for drywall in basements. I volunteered right away for that.

It wasn’t much work, and I thought we’d easily be done when I saw the first basement. We were only doing the spots around the stairs and HVAC stuff. With the interior of the section under the stairs done, we only had to cut around 80sq ft of drywall to fit around doorways and existing walls with OSB where water heaters were mounted.

The three of us worked with the Americorps guy and finished basement 1 by 10:30. With relatively straight cuts to make, we fell into a rhythm of measuring, cutting, and screwing things in. As the other two started to screw the last piece in, I carried equipment to the second basement.

This one was a mess. Probably only 40sq ft to do, but around lots of pipes. I called the Americorps guy and he said to skip this one for now. We went to the third basement, which was like the first, but more pipes in the way. We got halfway done before breaking for lunch.

It was cool in the basement, but I was glad to get out. I haven’t ever hung new drywall, so this was an adventure. I asked questions and learned how to match up pieces, putting the seams where I wouldn’t expect it. I learned how to cut it, and how to cut out electrical boxes, which wasn’t what I expected. I also learned it creates a ton of dust, which bothered me at times and I needed to walk to a window well and breath outside air a few times.

We managed to get two basements done and we’d gotten the large parts of the third one done, but not much around the pipes. I bet the next day’s crew takes all day to get that one done.

It felt good to help with that house and it was neat to see another way that Habitat is helping people. This site also had the names of the families on a sign in front of each house.

That’s it for my volunteer efforts this sabbatical time, but I’ll be looking to go to more in the future, probably taking some days off when I can.

My company, Red Gate software, has given me a 6 week sabbatical. I’m documenting the time with all the posts under a tag if you want to follow along.

I woke up early and got going, taking a cup of coffee outside to get started. I laid out all the boards and clamped them down, both to get an idea of how the clamps might lay out and also to mark up the places for the biscuits.

I used almost all the clamps, and realized I was short. I couldn’t get good pressure all over and need another 8-10 clamps. I’ve heard you can never have enough, so this is a good excuse to get a few more.

I was glad I knocked off yesterday as I couldn’t believe some of the marks I made. They were way off, probably because I hadn’t clamped things tightly.

I remarked things, going slowly and adding arrows so I knew which ones to cut. Once that was done, I used a square to extend the marks to the sides where I need to cut biscuit slots. It was a little slow to mark all boards, and I worried about a few of the boards that were slightly twisted. However I’m hoping glue will move things over and since the biscuits allow some movement, I’ll see how things line up dry in the next few days.

I got to use the right angle jig that I made with the biscuit joiner when I got it. Since I need to register the biscuit joiner on the same side for all slots. I put each board against the right angle and then cut the slots.

I worked my way down each board, and then back up, cutting the slots. It actually went fairly quickly, though with 8 boards, and two slots every foot, that’s a lot of cutting.

I got everything cut, and then put away as the weather was darkening and getting windy. With things put away, the next step is to re-set things up the next time, add biscuits, check fit, and then glue things up.

Tenons

Class tonight was more catchup with the instructor out. I started by getting ready to cut more tenons. I think we’ll need to hand cut the 8 for our tables, though I’m hoping we can bandsaw a few of them. I struggle with the sawing.

I finished one I’d started last week and while it fit against the mortised leg fine, it was loose. The router plane is tough to tweak with really thin pieces. I was a little frustrated cutting, so I found the TA in charge and asked about the mortiser. He was happy to show me how to set it up, configuring the x, y, and z directions.

Once I saw it, I watched someone else cut their mortises and then went to lay out my board. Once that was done, I set the machine up and cut my own. It was pretty easy to use and worked so well. I might need to get one at some point.

With two great mortises cut, I want back to make tenons. I cut one of my aprons in half to get new ends and then went to work. My sawing got better, especially after one of the TAs found me a sharper saw. With the first cuts down, I worked on the router plane, trying to go slow.

It’s a semi maddening process, going really slow to shave off bits of the tenon. I got it close, maybe a bit tight, and then cut the other edges and got a great fit.

I started the next tenon, but ran out of time. I think I have three sides cut, though it feels a bit thin. The router plane is fighting me.

Fingers crossed that I get to machine a few tenons on Thursday.